Offences against Children: Internet

Andrea Leadsom: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps she is taking to work with police forces across the country to protect children from online sexual exploitation.

Norman Baker: The Government is committed to preventing online child abuse. Details of the Government plans to strengthen the protection of children from online sexual exploitation were published last summer in the Action Plan of the National Group to tackle Sexual Violence Against Children and Vulnerable People. Copies will be placed in the House Library and can be found at the following link;
	https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/230443/Sexual_Violence_against_Children_ and_Vulnerable_People.pdf
	The Child Exploitation Online Protection Command of the National Crime Agency (NCA-CEOP) is the UK's national law enforcement agency committed to preventing and tackling the sexual abuse of children both online and offline. In 2012/13, NCA-CEOP safeguarded and protected 790 children, an increase of 85% on the previous year.
	The NCA-CEOP Command works closely with all 43 police forces in England and Wales, Police Scotland and PSNI.
	In January 2013, the police created a National Child Sexual Exploitation Action Plan which sought to improve the police response to all forms of CSE both online and offline. Each force has now completed a benchmarking exercise, allowing them to understand and improve their capability to deal with CSE.
	HMIC are close to completing an inspection into the policing of online sexual exploitation and should be publishing their findings in the near future. This will help us identify best practice and also where the service needs to improve to deal with the proliferation of indecent images on the internet and grooming.